


Those Who Help Themselves

by gladdecease



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Episode: s04e20 The Rapture, Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days it felt like a vacation, like the family road trip they'd never had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Help Themselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lexhibition](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lexhibition).



> For the prompt: "Amelia and Claire are doing it tough after 'The Rapture'. Either Saint Becky finds out and raises them from perdition, or they both get jobs at the Roadhouse."

Amelia drove halfway out of the state before Claire noticed and thought to ask where they were going. She had been staring out the window for the last hour, when she suddenly blinked twice, hard, and turned to look at her mother.

"Daddy said we should go to Grandma and Grandpa's house."

Funny, Amelia couldn’t remember Jimmy saying - oh. Right.

That had been while the demon was possessing her.

"We can't go there, sweetie," Amelia said with cheer she didn't feel. "It's not safe there."

Claire frowned. "Yes it is," she said matter-of-factly. Then, eyes widening, she said, "Oh. You mean _they_ won't be safe, if we go there."

Amelia swallowed. "That's right," she croaked out. "We'd put them in danger."

" _I'd_ put them in danger," Claire corrected.

"No, sweetheart, no, that’s not it at all - " Amelia started.

"Yes it is," Claire said. "The demons are coming after me." She said it like it was nothing, like she might have said, "Love you, Mom," a week ago. And it was the thought that Claire might never say that sentence the same way again, that Castiel had done something to her, _changed_ her, that made Amelia silent until they reached the next rest stop, where Claire asked for a hamburger and root beer like always, and the thought was pushed from her mind.

* * *

But the fact remained that anywhere they stayed for long, they were putting people in danger. Those men - Dean and Sam - might have gotten rid of the demons that tried to kill Jimmy and Claire, but there were always more. Amelia was becoming more and more aware of bizarre facts like these, in her post-revelatory period.

Like: demons could be anywhere, and they could be any _one_ : strangers, your next-door neighbor, even your minister. Amelia hadn't thought so at first, had thought they would be safe at their church in Pontiac, up until the moment Reverend Jones had grinned cruelly at Claire, his eyes turning ink black.

She'd had to pull Claire, still screaming at him in Latin, from the church.

And that was another thing. Claire, and the newly learned Latin, and the obsession with salt, the iron crucifix she begged and pleaded for when they drove past a roadside stand selling them, the pentagram she doodled on her hand in pen, the one she drew on Amelia and begged her not to wash off not saying why.

There were times, when Claire went quiet and still, that she wondered if that was really her daughter in there anymore. If Castiel hadn't lied and taken Claire and Jimmy both. But then a minute later she would be fidgeting in her seat, asking how long to the next motel, the next gas station, complaining that she was hungry, that she was tired, that she wanted out.

Once, early in the morning, Claire saw a billboard for a Six Flags and begged for the next ten miles to go there, please, Mom, _pretty please_? And the whine in her voice and the pout of her lip were so reassuringly familiar that Amelia couldn't say no.

They spent the day riding roller coasters and eating awful carnival food, Claire wishing they'd brought their swimsuits so she could go on the water rides. Instead, she stood close enough to the ride exit to get splashed by the people coming down the water slide, and when she ended up shivering in wet clothes Amelia made her sit on a towel while she found them a motel for the night.

That was the first night the demons caught up to them, on the road.

* * *

The demons weren't subtle about it this time, like they had with Reverend Jones, with Roger and his wife, with Amelia herself. No pretending to be the person they were possessing this time, they were just suddenly outside the motel, laughing and jeering, telling Amelia what they were going to do to Claire when they got their hands on her. The windows shook in their frames, something dark and twisted and _wrong_ tainting the moonlight, turning it gray.

Claire ignored them, and quickly fell asleep. Amelia couldn't even dream of dreaming, not with those monsters so near by, so close to Claire. She spent the night sitting at the foot of Claire's bed, keeping guard. But there was nothing to guard her from - for all their talk, the demons never came in. And come morning, they were gone.

When Claire woke up, she wasn't surprised. "The salt keeps them out," she said, running her hands over the line of salt laid on the windowsill. "And I asked Castiel, before I went to sleep, to keep us safe from the demons."

"You asked him?" Amelia couldn't imagine asking an angel for anything.

Claire shrugged, repacking her backpack. "Well, yeah. It's kind of like praying, I guess. Besides, he promised Dad he would."

This was true. But Castiel had promised to keep them safe before, and Amelia had been possessed. Claire had been captured by a demon, a knife held to her throat. Hardly what she would call safe. But Claire looked so satisfied, as if _she_ had been the one to make the demons leave, that Amelia kept quiet.

Outside, there was no evidence that anyone, demon or otherwise, had been there.

* * *

The demons came regularly after that. Every night, just outside their door, making threats and promises that disgusted and horrified Amelia at turns. If she had ever considered driving at night to get farther away faster, the mental image of her daughter being vivisected in the backseat of the car quickly changed her mind about that. If that was her other option, she could wait out these terrifying nights.

And the days weren't so bad. Claire had cheered up since her proof of Castiel's help presented itself, and with her good mood came a sense of normality. Amelia found herself smiling more, laughing at jokes Claire had heard on TV. The moments of strange stillness came less and less often, and the two of them driving from small town to small town started to feel less like being on the run, and more like being on vacation. The family road trip they'd never had, before.

Sure, money was starting to get tight, and there was always the fear in the back of Amelia's head that she would get pulled over, which would only complicate things further. But they had each other, and they seemed to be safe for the moment. So long as they kept moving, nobody would get hurt.

Things almost seemed to be looking up, until the night Castiel didn't scare off the demons.

* * *

They didn't realize until morning, when Amelia opening the door to a set of three malicious grins. She immediately slammed the door in their faces, locked it (twice), and grabbed the canister of salt Claire had left sitting by the door. She poured it as quickly as she could across the doorway, but when she turned around one of them was standing over Claire, a wicked looking knife in her hand.

"Too late," the demon crooned, stroking Claire's hair with knobbly, arthritic fingers. Claire shuddered under her touch, mouthing something Amelia couldn't understand. The demon grinned at Amelia and whistled, and the door burst open, the lock broken and dangling from its chain. Two other demons, big bulky quarterback types, grabbed Amelia by the arms and dragged her to the foot of Claire's bed. One shoved her down onto her knees. The other grabbed her hair and _yanked_ , forcing her to watch as the female demon arranged Claire on the bedspread.

"Claire, sweetie, it'll be okay," Amelia said. The demon with a hand in her hair tugged before she could say more; she got the message and shut up.

"Claire, is it?" The demon drew her knife around Claire's head, tracing her jawline with the point. Claire trembled helplessly. "What's that you're whispering, _Claire_?" she asked, grabbing Claire's lower jaw in a tight grip. "Why don't you share with the class?"

Claire said a single word, muffled by the hold the demon had on her.

"What was that?"

Twisting her head slowly from side to side, Claire said it again, the word still indistinct.

"What?"

Shaking her head free of the grip, Claire said, "Castiel." When nothing happened, the demon laughed as Claire grew more frantic. "Castiel, _Castiel_ , help me, save me, you _promised_!"

Still laughing, the demon mimicked her. "Castiel, oh _Castiel_ , _save_ me Castiel!" The other demons joined in the laughter as Claire repeated the angel's name over and over again, sobbing.

"Claire, stop," Amelia whispered, looking away. She couldn't watch this.

"He isn't here," Claire said weakly, voice thick with tears. "Why isn't he here, why won't he save me?"

"Because he's _dead_ ," the demon snapped. "Like all the angels will be, now that our Father is here."

"No," Claire whimpered. "No, no, he can't be..."

"No," Amelia echoed, thinking _no, no, not Jimmy, **please** not Jimmy_. But if Castiel was dead, he had surely taken Jimmy with him, and now he was gone completely. Her husband was dead, and now a demon was going to kill her daughter while she watched, helpless to do anything.

Something about that made her snap. "No!" she said again, shoving against the demons to either side of her. They weren't expecting it, and for a moment she was free. She grabbed the salt canister, still half full, and threw salt at the demons, backing away from them, onto the bed. "Christo," she shouted, hoping she'd remembered the word right. The female demon flinched, her eyes suddenly black as pitch. Amelia threw salt at her too, watched as she stepped back, hissing in pain. The others were already approaching again, though, so she didn't have much hope that throwing salt would hold them off permanently.

"Claire, what else?"

Claire sat up slowly, eyes red, cheeks wet. "What?"

"What else? Salt, christo, what else?" Shaking out the last of the salt in a circle around them, Amelia watched Claire shake off her panic, and saw the stillness for what it was: Claire trying to remember things Castiel had thought while he possessed her. Not because she wanted to be the angel, because she'd thought she needed to know the things he did, to keep them safe. She'd probably been right.

"Uh, salt, holy water, iron - " Claire tugged her crucifix from around her neck and brandished it like a knife " - iron, and, um, the name of Christ, and exorcism. Exor - exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis, uh, omnis satanica potestas - "

"Do you really think that's going to work on us?" the demon asked, lifting her knife up. "A few handfuls of salt, a little iron dagger, and a stuttered exorcism?"

"No," said someone in the doorway, "but this might." The demons turned around, too slow to stop the women standing there from shooting at them. And then it was just bang-bang-bang, three shots each and the demons were collapsing to the floor.

Amelia felt like collapsing herself. "Oh, thank god," she said instead.

Claire, wiping the tears from her face, said, "Thank _you_."

The younger of the women smiled at Claire, and nodded. The elder holstered her gun and approached the bodies the demons had taken. "Any idea why they were after you?"

"They want Claire," Amelia explained. "My husband is... was an angel's vessel."

The women shared a glance. "An angel."

"He was supposed to protect us," Claire said. "But now - " Her voice cracked, and she grabbed Amelia in a tight hug, her eyes watering. "Mom, is he really dead?"

"I don't know, sweetie." Amelia smoothed down a flyaway strand of hair and tried to sound as calm and confident as possible. "Maybe we can find those men and ask them."

"You looking for a pair of hunters?" the older woman asked. She was done checking over the bodies, which looked undamaged, but unmoving. Whatever they'd done to get rid of the demons, it hadn't been what Sam had done for her. That was a shame, Amelia thought. They might have had families, like she did.

"Do you know where we can find them?"

"Hell, I know where you can find a whole barful of them," she said, smiling. "And I get the feeling you two could use a place to stay, for a time."

Amelia looked down at Claire, who looked up at her and said, "The demons - "

"We can take care of them," the younger one said, hefting her gun meaningfully.

Acknowledging the point, Amelia let go of Claire and stood, brushing salt off the seat of her pants. "I'm Amelia Novak," she said, holding out a hand to the older woman.

She took it in callused hands and shook firmly. "Ellen Harvelle, and my daughter Joanna Beth. Pleased to meet you."


End file.
